It's not often that a neuroscientist comments on the topic of caffeine consumption and how to optimize it, but Chris Chatham, author of Caffeine: A User's Guide to Getting Optimally Wired, shared some of his tips for those of us who like a good cup of coffee in the morning (or several) and also want to get the biggest cognitive boost for their caffeinated buck from every cup they drink. Here are his suggestions.

For all of its wild popularity, caffeine is one seriously misunderstood substance. It's not a…
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While you have that caffeine in your system, Chatham also suggests that you play to your strengths and do things that you know how to do well and take little mental wrangling. The cognitive benefits you get from caffeine, like we've explained before, help you work faster and harder doing things that are easy for you to start and keep moving on. Caffeine doesn't, however, make challenging problems easier to solve, or puzzling, abstract tasks any easier. Make sure that those early hours where you're nursing a few cups are filled with tasks that are easy for you to tackle and burn through, and your productivity will benefit.

Chatham also suggests you play to caffeine's strengths as well as your own—your body's absorption will vary depending on what you have in your system, so a little sugar or even grapefruit for breakfast will keep it around a little longer, while smoking a cigarette isn't a great idea (the nicotine speeds up your body's metabolism of caffeine.)